Pastor's Chat

Take your high school and college children

2008-04-24T09:18:00.001-04:00

On Tuesday night of this week a group of men from our church saw Ben Stein's movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed". Mr. Stein showed the status quo in academic and media circles does not allow conversation about the possibility Darwinian Evolution does not adequately describe the origins of life. Any mention of Intelligent Design is met with hostility and is silenced by job loss.

The prejudice was stark and ugly. Richard Dawkins, a prominent Darwinian Evolutionist from Great Britain, especially expressed great disdain and contempt for anyone believing there is a God who created. He says we are stupid and ignorant.

Stein and his people did a great job in demonstrating the complexity of life at the cellular level. Personally I was moved to worship my very intellligent Creator! I felt the movie made it clear that it takes more faith (blind?) to accept Darwinian Evolution than it does to accept creation as recorded in the Bible.

Take your high school and college age children to see this movie. Then buy them ice cream afterward and talk about what you just saw. This movie is both sobering and faith building.

Fasting Thoughts

2008-02-14T09:17:00.000-05:00

Is fasting a way of twisting God’s arm to get what I want? Does fasting show God how serious I am? Isaiah 58 gives me direction on what fasting can involve. Verse six talks about fasting that looses from chains, cords, oppressions, and yokes. So I think a part of what happens, when I fast and pray, is that God sets me free from stuff that oppresses me. I may or may not be consciously fasting and praying for release from those things.

But being loosed sets me free to do the next part. In verse seven, I am free to reach out to help others in need. Is it not the oppression in my life that keeps me from being compassionate? My self centered life is a prison where I live. To be in bondage is to live selfishly. But when God sets me free, I am free to love. We sing a song at MCF about being fee to run and dance and live for God. Living for God means in part that I am sharing God’s love with other people.

Now for a practical application: the first thing we are specifically praying for is that those who come to worship at MCF will make viable connections. So if in fasting I am set free from some bondage that keeps me from loving others, then I am free to be the one to reach out and provide the viable connection with the one who needs a Christian friend!

Pray While Fasting

2008-02-09T09:16:00.000-05:00

While praying several weeks ago before the worship service, I sensed God gave me three specific things for the church to pray for during the MCF 21 Day Fast.

1. That viable connections happen throughout the congregation
2. That the church get a hunger for the Bible
3. That the reality of God’s presence be experienced as the church meets

Why viable connections? What does that mean? Ephesians 4:16 makes it clear that Christian maturity is a product of God’s people speaking the truth to each other as they connect (ligaments). The church builds itself up. And of course the connecting and speaking must be done in love if building up instead of tearing down is to happen. The connections are viable when growth is taking place.

With attendance right now at 300+ we probably have upwards of 450-500 people who look to MCF as their church. Leadership tries to organize small groups where people can connect with each other. But there are many people who are not able to participate or simply choose not to for various reasons. There seems to be no way we can organize so comprehensively as to make sure that everyone has a circle of believers where viable connections are being made.

So we pray and ask God to so work in our midst that meaningful friendships are formed. For many of us “old-timers”, we will be the answer to that prayer. We will see our need to reach beyond our comfortable circles of present friends to talk and meet with new people. Also newcomers will supernaturally find themselves meeting and visiting with people who can encourage and help them. I simply believe that God wants his people to connect in viable ways. So I am asking him to bring it about. Otherwise, how will we ever grow?

Sunday Morning Worship Philosophy

2007-09-27T09:15:00.000-04:00

My observation over the past 29 years at MCF is that generally people do not come to the altar on a Sunday morning to accept Jesus Christ as lord and savior. It has happened occasionally, but not regularly. Many people have become Christians during those years, just not on Sunday mornings.

Rather, the pattern seems to be that God’s people faithfully witness and minister in what some call the “marketplace”. The marketplace is defined as where we work, play, get education, interact with our communities, and live with our families. The marketplace is outside the organized church. Out of those ministry times, people get interested in Jesus and respond to his invitation to “come and follow me” in the privacy of their homes or over a cup of coffee or during break time.

I happen to like that pattern. Personally I have developed a philosophy over the years about the Sunday morning service. Sunday morning is the prime opportunity to disciple God’s people. To be discipled means to become more like Jesus. There is no other time slot in MCF church life when so many who follow Jesus are together at one place. So when I think through a service, the driving force for me is not how our singing or prayer or preaching can be least offensive to a visiting unbeliever, but rather how can we set an atmosphere where we experience the immanent presence of God and thus disciple those who already know Jesus.

Please understand, we do want the unbelieving visitor to be warmly welcomed. We do not set out to make visitors uncomfortable. But wouldn’t it be an indictment against us if unbelievers were among us as we worshipped and they felt totally comfortable? The convicting power of the Holy Spirit is not comfortable, it is penetrating and revealing, it is intent on bringing eternal change.

I believe that if we, the people of God, worship him with zeal and abandon, entreat him in prayer circles with simple believing faith, and respond with open hearts to truth from the Bible, we will be discipled. Then the genuine transforming presence of Jesus in his followers will reach out to the unsaved and hurting among us – whether they are in the church service or in the marketplace.

Perhaps we will see more decisions for Christ on Sunday mornings – because of the overflow from his people being changed, not because the unsaved are targeted with an evangelistic message. In the meantime, let’s continue both to be faithful in letting God change us and faithful to witness about him in the marketplace.

Night Prayer

2007-05-03T09:14:00.000-04:00

Tuesday morning I met with a group of pastors and one of them shared about an interview author Neil Anderson had with a former Satan worshiper. He stated that Satan worship is usually conducted from 12 midnight to 3 in the morning, after which demonic entities are sent out to harass people. Often when Neil conducts seminars he surveys the audience to see how many people are unexplainably wakened in the wee hours of the morning, restless, and unable to go back to sleep. There are many.

Last Sunday evening at the small group I lead in our home, a number of the members were recounting how they often wake up during the night with a worrisome burden in the forefront of their thoughts. So they pray. That often happens to me. I awaken with fear and worry and anxiety about one of my children or a situation in the church. If I lay there trying to figure out what can be done, my mind develops the worst case scenario, my anxiety level increases, and I get angry with my child, making it impossible to go back to sleep.

So, after the obligatory visit to the water closet, I make a visit to the prayer closet (Matthew 6:6 KJV). I pray, and then I drift off to sleep. And that is OK. Actually, I believe God is saying something like, “Thanks for standing in the gap, making it possible to release my power to bring this thing on earth into line with my will in heaven. Now, you go back to sleep while I go to work!”

When we awaken in the night, let’s pray. If being wide awake is harassment, then the dark powers will soon leave us alone because they fear the power of prayer. If being awake is a burden from God, then what an opportunity to be involved in bringing His will to the earth! So pray, and then, sweet dreams!

Visitors From China

2007-03-29T09:12:00.000-04:00

In early March, as I was praying during the pre-service prayer time, Psalm 2:8-9 came very strongly to my mind. Later, during the worship service I shared with the congregation that I felt God was inviting us to ask Him to "make the nations our inheritance and the ends of the earth our possession." That scripture is prophetically referring to Jesus, but God has also become our Father as we are in Christ. So we asked.

Now, forward to Sunday, March 25. Because of a tragic traffic accident that took the lives of three Urbana University students from China, about ten family members of the deceased students were invited to come to our morning worship service. How they got here is another account, perhaps for a future blog. They came to an English speaking, Christian worship service, though they did not understand English and some of them were practising Buddhists.

The morning we looked at Psalm 2, we also learned that verse 9 says we will rule with an iron sceptor. But to rule under Jesus' lordship means to love and to serve. Love is the New Testament power that brings change. And the congregation of MCF did just that. We cried with our visitors. We hugged on them. Some of us had only recently experienced similar tragedy and grieved with them in heartfelt, deep waves of compassion.

"Father, thank you for trusting us to love our new friends from China. Watch over the seeds of love that were sown and bring forth a harvest of 30, 60, and even 100 fold. In Jesus' name, amen."